A Song for Earth and Sky
by Dagny Taggart
Summary: SSHG Alternate Universe; prologue explains everything better than this summary could. MF
1. Prologue

Stargard is a high, cold mountain, shooting up against the ghost- white of the northern skies. Only the greater predators live there, and eagles, river-snakes, never an insect. It was the Starborn who first found the place, long ago, making their precarious way through the ice-mountains, on foot, or riding the great magical horses who have disappeared from the world.  
  
It is almost always foggy there, tendrils of low-hanging clouds, the sun a distant, wan thing, even on clear days. Many have been lost there, among the peaks; particularly Earthborn men who desire adventure to relieve the crushing tedium of their lives. Horses and humans have been crushed under magnificent avalanches, which are common there. Some say there are nameless creatures who roam under the Mountain, alive since the days of darkness before the dawn of the world. The safe paths are narrow, not remotely predictable, you must know them exactly, ride or walk in single file, easy to ambush. Great explosions of living stone rise up in places, startling and strange in the blinding whiteness, rooted under the ice, leading the wanderer to stray and fall.  
  
And the Starborn, perhaps due to the hard edge of their temperaments, chose this place to build their Academy. The Mountain, which they sometimes called the Battlement, but usually Stargard, was hollowed out with their potent magic a thousand years before. Great sheets of glass replaced large stretches of the slope, lighting the inside like a great Earthborn atrium from the Lost Cities, those places that were once the wonders of the non- magical world. But like the Horses, Aether Fire, and the knowledge of their origins, the Lost Cities had retreated from the known earth.  
  
The Starborn had their capital elsewhere, at the great city of Moonpath in the mountains, far from Stargard the way an Earthborn traveled, far from there and into the rising sun. But though the Academy was not their largest settlement, it was surely a marvel in all the worlds. Here young Starborn came to be trained, to grow into the power that was their birthright, and to one day become magi. There were a thousand students living in Stargard, a hundred per year of training. They lived in four Houses- Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Gryffindor, in spacious rooms spread throughout the mountain. For ten years they were schooled, growing slowly from terrified youths into confident adults, and preparing to take their place in the world of men and magi.  
  
But rarely, only once in a decade or so, a child of two Earthborn parents would show qualities of being Starborn, and would be brought into the magical world for training and perhaps acceptance. She would be removed from her dank, earthly home, her dim, hidebound parents, and her dark, closed world- removed, and brought up into Stargard, for training at the Uriel Academy, among the sons and daughters of magi.  
  
Unsurprisingly, these Earth-tainted Starborn were shunned by many, and their passage made arduous. Though sometimes, that was overcome by a brave child determined to be a magi. Sometimes, in the snow and ice at the top of the world, miracles happened. 


	2. The Lion Court

High in the ice mountains that men called the Wrath of God, an eagle took flight. He dove from his eyrie, great ivory wings pressed flat to his body, plunging like a spell towards the valley floor. Mile after mile he streaked, his numbing speed blurring the lines that separated him from the snow-veined black rock of the mountains that seemed to rocket upwards past his shadowy form. Then, at the last possible moment, he unfurled his wings and leveled his mad descent, skimming low over the raging, foaming waters of the Dagger. He raced the river among the frozen peaks and past Stargard of the Magi, the gusts generated by his pounding strokes sweeping the snow up against the silver clouds and back from his fleeting body. South he flew, straight over the Diamond Wall cascades, down into the brown foothills that guarded the range, and out over the Gilded Plains of Delorien. Miles upon miles, racing the thundering herds of wild stallions, screeching ominously as he went, finally alighting at Ferns, the capital of Delorien. There he perched, his white head cocked to one side, appearing to the superstitious Earthborn to be listening to something. Passing men made the sign to ward off evil as they spotted him from the muddy lanes that surrounded the castle. If he noticed the disturbance he was causing, the great White Eagle did not show it, being just as stoic as the rest of his kind.  
  
While the eagle perched atop the walls, inside the castle a girl was carrying flasks of wine and hurrying down a corridor. She was young, only nine or so, with long frizzy hair the color of chestnuts tied back from her narrow, elven face. Though dressed in clothes of moderate price, the lank way they hung on her small frame and the drab colors suggested that she was more destitute than she truly was. Her parents, somewhat surprisingly, were the only respectable physicians in Ferns, and so young Hermione ought to have had nicer things. But the Blight had struck the city, changing lives. Like all physicians in Delorien, her parents were bound by law to pay fines to the families of patients that died while under their care. They could, of course, refuse to even treat someone, but the Grangers were oddly compassionate people and hardly ever refused anyone. Thus, when the Blight first appeared within the walls, the Grangers risked their own lives to save their patients, failed almost every time, and paid the fines for failure out of the money they had saved away for Hermione's dowry.  
  
Hermione, eager to help her parents regain their small fortune, had become a servant at the castle. The pay was five sickles a week; it was about all she could expect at her age, and a little more if truth be told. Enough, she hoped, to help buy herbs for her family's depleted stores.  
  
The wine flasks were beginning to feel heavier than they had when she'd gotten them down by the kitchens. She was really too young to be carrying so much, but the wine steward was completely oblivious to this. But it's not so bad, she thought to herself as she began the final climb up the long steps to the great hall. I'll get to see the King, and maybe some of the Sword Princes.  
  
She reached the heavy wooden door, lifted her hand to knock, then blanched. What am I doing? She thought desperately, backing away. Servants don't enter here! I'll always be an uncouth little mud-dweller if I can't even remember—  
  
"You there! Do you bring the king's wine?" a higher servant called to her. She had never seen him before, and was a little afraid.  
  
"Yes, sir," she mumbled, edging away, while the servant peered at her intently.  
  
"Then perhaps," he suggested, lowering his voice and deepening the pitch, "You ought to bring it over here." He had said nothing untoward or amiss, had been perfectly nice, had treated her better than another servant might have... but Hermione felt a hand of ice grip her heart as she looked at him.  
  
"Girl, are you quite well?" he questioned, a slight edge of irritation entering his voice.  
  
"Uh..." Hermione couldn't believe her own behavior. Uh? She was the brightest girl in Ferns, and here she was stammering at and cowering from a perfectly nice—  
  
Apparently, she hadn't just been stammering and cowering. She had also been edging away from him... it was a shame that there were steps behind her.  
  
For one moment she would relive for years in her nightmares, she teetered on the brink of the last step, feeling the world shift and heave around her, feeling her stomach try to crawl up into her throat, seeing the face of the servant, his expression...  
  
...but she did not regain her balance, and began to tumble down the steps. Some instinct had made her curl up in a ball, which helped, though not enough. The castle spun maddeningly around her, the stone steps slammed into her body over and over again, each jolt bringing excruciating pain, until finally, a nasty crack on the back of the head relieved her of her consciousness.  
  
*  
  
At the heart of Ferns lay the only man-made thing in all Delorien to be known as glorious throughout the world: the Lion Court. Great blocks of marble imported from Moria and the desert country of Vannihar were stacked so high to make the great walls that the mind reeled as the eye tried to follow them. Long strips of Starborn-enchanted glass were set vertically at regular intervals along the walls, letting in the fierce sunrays that beamed unbroken across the Gilded Plains which stretched out away from the capital city. The sunlight caught subtle but abundant flecks of gold in the marble, so that when the light entered one window it made the entire Hall glitter and shimmer like the sand of Vannihar.  
  
Great carvings and statues were arranged low along the walls; a mighty stallion from the Plains, a hawk wheeling in the marble, and the forms of every king who had ever reigned in the country (there were only twenty or so, since it was a young place relative to the rest of the world.) But dwarfing all these were the great Lions that guarded the Hall. They were statues, easily twenty feet high, and there were thirty all together. Standing forever in two neat rows at the edges of the narrow hall, the stone beasts had all of their identical, snarling heads angled down and towards the great ebony doors at the southern end of the hall, so that every emissary or foreign lord who entered would have to walk the length of the room with lions staring at him, before he even reached the dais where the Great Lion, the King, would be waiting.  
  
But it was dark in that part of the world, then, since night had come early with the raging thunderclouds from the east and from the west racing towards each other to meet over Delorien. The wind had already picked up, though the two storms were still many miles away, and bits of trees and refuse were being blown up against the many long windows. Hundreds of torches (Adri liked brightness) were flaming all along the walls, turning the windows to mirrors, so that the disturbance caused by the weather could be heard but not seen. The Princes of the Sword, assembled to take council with their king, found this eerie and somewhat disturbing, but Adri, the Lion of Delorien, did not.  
  
The Lion Court, in years passed, had only been used for formal ceremonies, particularly those involving foreign dignitaries Delorien needed to impress. But Adri had an unfortunate love of all things great and fine; unfortunate, because the only truly glorious thing in all of the sprawling country was the Lion Court itself. So it was here, in the formal hall, that he conducted nearly all of his business.  
  
And tonight, the business was war. 


	3. Of Things Unexpected

"But my Lord, we are not certain that the intercept referred to the Festival of Mirbor. True, we have reason to believe it does, but I am unwilling—"  
  
"Silence, boy." The young man who had been speaking blushed crimson, confirming the condescending statement in a way cold indifference would not have. "Your willingness or unwillingness to gather evidence and take decisive action means nothing in this Hall or in this kingdom. Your council will fall on more ready ears when your own don't flush at the slightest hint of embarrassment. Sword Prince Camren, take leave of us," the King of Delorien commanded irritably. The older Sword Princes, who knew his moods as well as they knew their own, discerned that Adri truly liked young Camren, and was frustrated whenever the boy did not fully live up to his potential; so he treated the newest Prince of the Sword like an errant child because he was a favorite, not because of any true disapproval.  
  
They doubted, though, as the fair-haired warrior strode angrily from the Lion Court, that the boy understood as much.  
  
But there were far more significant things to consider just then that Adri's peculiar father/son dynamic.  
  
"Sire, Camren may have spoken foolishly, but he did not speak ignorantly," Prince Grigory remarked. "In all the old customs Mirbor is referred to as the Gathered Storm of Autumn, but that name has not been used in hundreds of years. Would the commanders in Kerua know or remember that? Would they use that in code? We can guess. We can hope. But in the end, we all know that we cannot find any degree of certainty. The intercept refers to the attack as coming 'in the midst of the gathering storms,' but that could refer to the yearly thunderstorms that roll down from the Wrath of God just before winter begins in earnest. We can be most alert throughout the Festival, but I am wary of thrusting out our necks so far that we cannot draw them back if we were mistaken, my Lord King," Grigory finished, bowing low. Adri considered him for a moment, frowning, before lifting his hand in acknowledgement and turning away.  
  
"What say you, Argonas?" the king questioned neutrally.  
  
"I believe you know," the man replied darkly, pointedly leaving out any proper form of address or any subtle obeisance. The other Sword Princes murmured angrily among themselves, for all the world as if this had been the first time the foreign-born soldier had failed to show respect to the king they loved.  
  
"You believe I should act on this intercept?"  
  
"I believe that, yes," Argonas replied as he absently leaned against a column. His stance, in the heart of Delorien, in the Lion Court itself, was entirely too casual.  
  
"And do you have any belief concerning what action should be taken?" Grigory demanded, pulling his muscular frame into such a taut stance that he seemed to be compensating for the other man's slouch.  
  
"I believe we should attack Kerua on the first night of Mirbor," Argonas remarked.  
  
Chaos erupted.  
  
"Are you mad?" Prince Ludar cried over the shouts of his fellow soldiers. "If we are right about what the intercept is saying, the entire army of Kerua will be assembling and arming themselves that night, in preparation for attacking the next night. How could you possibly suggest bringing them into open battle when they are at their most ready?" Argonas replied, quietly, but no one in the hall could hear him for their own din of indignation. Slowly, they realized they would not receive their answer until they were silent, and one by one their voices dissolved into murderous glares. When it was quiet enough in the Lion Court that they could again hear the wind howling outside, Argonas brushed back his light brown hair and looked up to Adri, who had been watching him intently the entire time.  
  
"Because, Ludar, that is the last possible time any of them would suspect, simply because it is so ridiculous. True, they will all be assembled, but not yet for battle, thus making it far simpler to exterminate all of them in one fell swoop. With one swipe of Her paw Delorien could eliminate those mud-bound fools, and is that not the point?" Argonas finished, his voice addressing his comrades but his eyes seeing only the King.  
  
"Grigory... are the men fully ready for war?" Adri questioned placidly.  
  
"My Lord King! Surely you cannot mean..."  
  
"I am only asking you if it could be done, I am not yet ordering it," the King reproved. None in the hall failed to notice that he had said 'yet.'  
  
*  
  
Camren strode from the Lion Court, stubborn tears of frustration brightening his eyes. He was desperately afraid someone might see the glimmer for what it was, but that was only because he could not see the wrathful mask his features had assumed; no one who saw him like that would ever think he was on the verge of sobbing like a little boy.  
  
Like a little boy, he thought miserably as he swung the great ebony doors inward. I may be a Delorienin Prince of the Sword, but that will only command respect on foreign soil. At seventeen, he was by far the youngest man to ever have even been given the opportunity to be tested, let alone to achieve that high status.  
  
For all my strength and intelligence I may as well be back at the ranch shoveling horse shit, he thought as he started down the steps. What he saw at the bottom, however, made him forget his own angst.  
  
That bright little serving girl he adored was lying motionless at the foot of the stairs, blood and the contents of one of the wineskins staining the marble red. Without further thought Camren raced to her side, reaching her just as another man, about his age, did.  
  
"She needs a doctor," Camren gasped, somewhat obviously. "She has no pulse, and he heartbeat is faint."  
  
"She did receive several bad cracks on the head," the other man remarked coolly. The Sword Prince shot him a withering look.  
  
"Go find a doctor, fool," he commanded.  
  
"I take orders only from His Highness and his Princes."  
  
"I am Sword Prince Camren!" By the last word, he was screaming. Fear, or something very like it, flickered briefly in the man's bright blue eyes before he set off without a word.  
  
"Please, little girl, don't die," Camren whispered as he sank back to his knees. Tenderly, and without even knowing why he was doing it, he found himself gently brushing her bushy hair back from her face. She was just a nameless servant, bony and a little plain, too young to be sexually attractive... but he couldn't bear to see her broken like this.  
  
"I believe the girl needs Healing," a man said suddenly, startling Camren, who had not heard footsteps. He looked up quickly... and felt his face go white. Standing there before him, in the heart of an Earthborn kingdom, stood a black-robed magi with dangerous black eyes.  
  
A/N  
  
Sorry this is starting so slowly; it gets a lot better. The trouble is that I'm trying to set up an entire world, with its own politics, subtleties, and settings. I am drawing off of JK Rowlings characters (some of them), but the rest is original.  
  
You know, at this point, ANY reviews would be nice. I'd be happy to go and review some of your stories- I'm new here anyway, and it would give me a good reading list.  
  
Thank you, and do let me know what you think. 


End file.
